Classical and Multisymplectic Schemes for Linearized KdV Equation: Numerical Results and Dispersion Analysis

We construct three finite difference methods to solve a linearized Korteweg–de-Vries (KdV) equation with advective and dispersive terms and specified initial and boundary conditions. Two numerical experiments are considered; case 1 is when the coefficient of advection is greater than the coefficient of dispersion, while case 2 is when the coefficient of dispersion is greater than the coefficient of advection. The three finite difference methods constructed include classical, multisymplectic and a modified explicit scheme. We obtain the stability region and study the consistency and dispersion properties of the various finite difference methods for the two cases. This is one of the rare papers that analyse dispersive properties of methods for dispersive partial differential equations. The performance of the schemes are gauged over short and long propagation times. Absolute and relative errors are computed at a given time at the spatial nodes used.